The Virgin's Spy (16 page)

There would be none. Stephen was flawlessly prepared and beginning to enjoy himself. Liadan finally stopped questioning and, with a crease between her brows, remarked, “You are nicer than I thought you'd be.”

“I don't suppose you have any good opinion of Englishmen. I don't blame you.”

“My father's an Englishman,” she said, unexpectedly. Though Stephen knew that much, he didn't have to feign surprise at her easy admission. “Father Byrne says I should not want to kill him for it, because then how would I have been born? But I think I should at least like to slap him for what he did to my mother.”

“I'm sorry to hear it,” Stephen replied carefully. “Not all men, of any country, are good men. I am sorry that Ireland has had to learn that lesson over and over.”

“Liadan,” Maisie said abruptly, softened by a smile, “go and see how long before dinner.”

When the girl had vanished, after bestowing an affectionate hug on the previously stone-faced guard standing in the open doorway, Maisie stepped in front of Stephen and tipped her head up. A long ways. She was a foot shorter than he was, her heart-shaped face bland and unremarkable save for the intensity in her gray eyes. The linen wimple covering her hair had slipped a little and he could see that her hair was astonishingly pale, reminiscent of silver gilt.

Stephen mentally raced through what he knew about the Sinclairs: wealthy, but because of their cleverness and business acumen rather than birth or position. Old William Sinclair had died a year and a half ago, leaving only two grandchildren, Maisie and her brother. From what he'd heard from Walsingham, Maisie's brother had inherited his grandfather's business but not his intelligence. From the way she was studying him, Stephen suspected that legacy had gone to Maisie instead.

But how dangerous could a sixteen-year-old girl be?

Her first question was unexpected but not especially dangerous. “Do you have a brother, Mr. Wyatt?”

“Call me Stephen,” he replied instinctively, to keep from flinching. “I have no siblings, as I told Liadan—an only child, just like her. Just like I told Ailis and every man of hers she's had question me. Did she ask you to try and trip me up? But then I suppose the Scots have as little reason to trust the English as the Irish do.”

He focused on Maisie's intent face, refusing to let anything rise to the surface of his mind: Lucie, Pippa, Kit. No siblings. No attachments.

Maisie smiled, quick and mischievous. “Just as well. Siblings can be difficult—especially brothers.”

The guard shifted as Liadan came darting back in. “We can go to dinner now! I'm to bring our guest.”

Stephen gallantly offered the girl his arm and, giggling, she put her hand in the crook of his elbow. Both Maisie and the guard followed them out. But it was Maisie's gray eyes Stephen could feel focused on him. Assessing.

Francis de Valois, Duc d'Anjou and heir presumptive to the throne of France, arrived at Greenwich Palace the last week in June to royal fanfare, beneath which atmosphere mingled calculation, mistrust, and hope. Elizabeth and Burghley stood with Sir Henry Lee, who had arranged the ceremonious arrival to the last footstep, and everything—even the weather—cooperated.

Elizabeth chose to greet Anjou dockside, where the royal barge she had lent him pulled alongside. She wore an elaborate gown of purple and cloth-of-silver, and atop her closely curled red wig perched an arrangement of jewels and stiffened silver lace like butterfly wings. Behind her, Greenwich was at its best in its summer colours, and it was a real pleasure to once more greet Jehan de Simier.

“My monkey!” Elizabeth said delightedly. Simier kissed her hand, then made way for his royal prince, Duc Francis of Anjou. The French royal equalled—if not surpassed—Elizabeth for sartorial flamboyance. His doublet and trunk hose were made of gold damask, with stiffly embroidered silk set in the trunk-hose panes. He wore rubies on his fingers and had an enormous diamond in his hat.

Like both Elizabeth and her late brother, Francis had suffered a bout of smallpox when younger. The scarring had left him far short of handsome, but the twenty-seven-year-old prince had merry eyes and thick hair and an intelligent good humour about him that was attractive in its way.

“Madame la reine,”
he said graciously, and kissed Elizabeth's offered hand. She was still vainly proud of her white hands and long fingers, even if age had begun to slowly creep into her joints.

Francis straightened and said in charmingly accented English, “I bring with me the well wishes of my brother, the king, and of my mother. It has been too long since France and England have been friends. We would remedy that in whatever manner seems best to both our countries.”

Oh, how glad Catherine de Medici must be to have Spain no longer allied to England, Elizabeth thought. She wondered if the French queen mother was quite as glad to have Mary Stuart replace her as Philip's wife. Catherine did not like her deceased oldest son's bride at all and had been only too glad to get rid of Mary to Scotland. During her years of trouble at home and confinement in England, the French crown had made no move to intervene. Probably Catherine was most disappointed with Elizabeth for not having gotten rid of Mary and saved all of them this trouble.

For if Mary Stuart had not wed Philip, the Spanish king might well have turned instead to the French nobility for a young Catholic bride.

But he hadn't, and so here they were. Elizabeth bestowed a dazzling smile on Francis and said, “Our wish for friendship could not be greater. Come in, and meet the jewel of England. My daughter, Anne.”

Anabel, by her mother's design, was seated in the hall on the smaller of two thrones. Hers bore the embroidered canopy of the Princess of Wales, and she rose, cool and remote, as her mother and her possible future husband approached with the rest of the court officers behind.

Elizabeth had overseen the design of her daughter's gown in every detail. To accent her youth and virginity, Anabel wore an ivory silk damask that emphasized her pale skin. The ruff was mostly lace, to delicately frame the face, and her red-gold hair was dressed in loose waves pulled into a chignon at the back of her neck. She wore no jewels, save the locket ring Elizabeth had given her at the investiture.

Naturally, Anabel spoke fluent French to their guest. “Welcome to England, dear brother of France. It is a great joy to my heart to meet at last.”

Elizabeth continued to her own throne and sat where she could watch Francis's face. He had been sent portraits of Anabel, and of course had the reports of many ambassadors and visitors over the years. Despite all that, she thought she detected a quiver of surprise at how truly beautiful her daughter was. Portraits could exaggerate, after all, and men's tales could be embellished. But Anabel herself was perfect.

Francis bowed low to Anabel—who did not extend her hand to be kissed—and when he straightened said simply, “I had thought I had anticipated all that this visit would bring. I confess that I severely underestimated the joy of it.”

Though she kept a straight face, Elizabeth's eyes briefly darted to Burghley, standing a little behind Francis. She knew they were thinking the same thing.
If Anjou has his way, he'll be wed to Anabel before ever he leaves England.

Good. That meant they held all the cards. And that was the only way Elizabeth liked playing.

The formal reception for the Duc d'Anjou flowed in a steady progression through the afternoon: introductions to England's leading nobility and councilors, a tour of Greenwich, a feast nicely balanced between impressive and welcoming, and finally musicians. There was no real dancing tonight, but lots of opportunities for private conversations between two or three as people mingled inside and out.

Anabel took the first chance that offered to steer Lucette and Julien LeClerc into a garden alcove for their opinion.

Lucette spoke first. “And what do we think of Francis de Valois?”

“I don't know, what do we think? Any guidance from my personal Frenchman and his wife?” But though Anabel nominally addressed Julien, it was Lucette's opinion she wanted. Of the man, not the position.

Her friend understood her at once. “Nothing you cannot see for yourself. He's smart and cautious and principled—and masks it all with a French insouciance that he can turn on and off at will, I imagine.”

Julien breathed out a laugh, and Lucette's teasing smile at her husband made Anabel's heart ache. She had thought herself prepared for this business of personal suitors, approaching the matter as she did everything in her life—with ferocious study and flawless focus. She had thought she'd known all she needed to of Francis. Right up until the moment she met him and realized that there was a physical being behind all the reports and letters and political considerations.

It wasn't that she found him repulsive. They were of a height and his fine dark eyes went a long ways to balance his slightly crooked posture and scarred face. But his flattery had left her cold. She could never imagine looking at him as Lucette was now looking at Julien.

“Well,” she said brightly, suddenly anxious to escape, “at least he will not be boring. We are riding tomorrow—would you both come?”

This time it was Julien who spoke, though it was more to her previous concerns than the question asked. “Your Highness, the Valois family can be…prickly. Prideful. But Francis is among the best of them. He is not given to quick judgment or narrow views. I think you might like him well enough.”

She forced a smile. “If he is half as astute as you are, I shall like him very well. What more could I wish for?”

Hazel eyes and golden hair, a mind that matched hers beat for beat…

Anabel shook off that fantasy and headed inside to flirt with Anjou.

O
ver the next three weeks, Stephen Wyatt provided information on two more planned English patrols. Ailis's men brought home success each time, including finding a small cache of weapons during the second raid. Her guards were well-trained and well-disciplined, not always usual for Irish forces, and Diarmid mac Briain kept them on task. After the third raid, she and her captain of the guard discussed the immediate future of their prisoner.

“He seems genuinely interested in opposing his former countrymen,” Ailis mused. “Though his motive seems a little thin to me. All for a woman? I've never known any man to be that fond of any woman.”

“Perhaps you aren't looking at the right men,” Diarmid answered neutrally enough, but Ailis caught the twitch of his jaw.

She ignored it. “I lend more weight to his recusant Catholicism, and most weight of all to the beating and the savaging of his pride. He strikes me as a very proud man—in himself, mind you, not just because he's English—and I believe he has a genuine thirst for revenge. How far can we harness it?”

“Not far enough that I'd stop locking him in at night,” Diarmid warned.

How well he knew her. She smiled. “What, you don't trust your men if he sleeps among them? I think we might learn more of Stephen the more we give him his head. I've no doubt you will continue to have eyes on him at all times.”

Diarmid grunted but would not argue. There were advantages to his feelings for her, and Ailis used them skillfully.

“Our overseas guests are on the move?” she asked. Even alone, they spoke elliptically of the Spanish soldiers. Surprise was their greatest weapon, and it could not be wasted.

“They are. We've had word from Fiach O'Toole. The guests moved out of Glenmalure two days ago and are marching fast and dressed as locals toward Askeaton. The English might see them, but only from a distance. They will expect it is only more Irish coming to defend the Earl of Desmond.”

“And the earl? He is prepared to make his stand?”

Gerald FitzGerald was a chancy man at best, having long had to balance his family inheritance and land of birth against the English crown that ratified his title. He'd never cut the dashing figure of his cousin James FitzMaurice, who had romped through Ireland twelve years ago and come very close to driving the English out of Munster entirely.

Then they'd caught him, and James FitzMaurice had died either a traitor or a martyr, depending on which side of the impassable divide you stood. Ailis remembered FitzMaurice and his kind words to her after Kilmallock. For his sake—and because they could not do without Desmond at this juncture—she would support FitzGerald.

As for Stephen Wyatt, she was prepared to give him his head to some degree. With the Spanish finally on the move, her part in the plan was to wait for word from Askeaton. Diarmid and her men would ride if FitzGerald called for aid, but for now she would stay in Cahir. She would not stray too far from here, in such easy reach of Templemore and the man upon whom she had vowed vengeance a dozen years ago.

Only one man living knew the name of Liadan's father. She had never even told Finian, despite her uncle's shrewd guesses. Father Byrne alone knew her secret, for telling him carried with it the seal of the confessional and he would never divulge it. Ailis never talked about her months in Kilmallock as a fourteen-year-old Irish girl in an English-garrisoned town, for she had learned cunning and caution at the hands of the very man who had stolen her childhood. From him she had learned to school her expressions, not to flinch or show fear, to never admit weakness.

The English were enemies. He was
the
enemy. The object of long years of planning to bring him within her reach. Soon, very soon, thanks to the Spanish soldiers and the relief of Askeaton, the man at Templemore would have to move at a time and place of her choosing. And with Stephen Wyatt resident with the Kavanaughs, Ailis had a new plan to bring her enemy within reach.

She began to lay the groundwork that very evening, when she asked Stephen if he would join her to discuss his immediate future in Ireland. Diarmid made to follow her—and even Father Byrne moved slightly—but she waved them off. She was not afraid of this Englishman.

Actually, she found him far more engaging than was comfortable. Bastard son he might be, but he'd clearly been educated and had a quick sense of humour and a gentleness with Liadan that had not gone unnoticed. Ailis knew how to read the characters of men, and despite her native caution, she felt certain that Stephen Wyatt was not given to cruelty or attacks on women.

Stephen followed her to her chamber, which served for both sleeping and study, and took the proffered seat across the table from her. Stretched across it, as she usually had, was a map of Ireland. Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Galway were lightly shaded, fading out around the cities to indicate the Pale, those areas under direct English control. Ailis hardly needed the map any longer, for she could see the details imprinted on her mind every time she closed her eyes. But this map had become something of a talisman. She had drawn this map—and others like it—herself over a number of years, and each hour spent with parchment and ink was a symbol of her control.

Ailis pointed to Askeaton, fifty miles northwest of Cahir. “You know the Earl of Desmond?”

“Not personally.”

“The English think he cannot hold at Askeaton any longer. We are expecting an English siege this summer, which would force Desmond to run for the hills as his cousin FitzMaurice did ten years ago. He could last some years in the wilderness, but that's hardly likely to advance our cause and roll back English control. Desmond must hold Askeaton.”

“ ‘Our' cause?”

She met his eyes, a shifting greenish-gold fringed by dark, thick lashes. His hair was almost as black as hers. Though he'd had it cut since reaching Cahir, it was still unruly, and he'd not shaved his beard completely, letting it shadow the angles of his face and jaw. For the first time in her life, Ailis was swept by the desire to touch a man's hair, to feel it slip between her fingers where it clung to his neck.

It was such a surprising sensation that she almost lost the thread of what she'd been saying. She cleared her throat and looked down at the map without seeing it. “I will never trust you wholly—I cannot afford to. But you have proved useful and I find I can believe in your need for revenge. In that, we are very similar.”

“Are we?”

His voice was neutral, but Ailis thought there was a suppressed energy to it. “You know that Liadan's father is English—no doubt she told you herself. I have never tried to hide it. I was fourteen when Kilmallock fell to Humphrey Gilbert and the English. By the time FitzMaurice retook and burned the town, I was five months gone with child. I have not spoken of the man responsible, not all these years, because it is no one's business but mine. Until now. Now, he is almost within my reach. There are plans within plans afoot in Munster just now—and one of those plans is my vengeance.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Because you are surprisingly easy to talk to, because you are not Irish and not family, because even though you are English, you do not have that smug air of everything belonging to you, because I believe that you wept when the Roisin you spoke of was murdered…

“Because I believe you could be of use to me. I don't intend to set you against your own countrymen in general. Too much risk of your native honour staying your hand or making you hesitate at the worst possible moment. But I think you might understand the nature of vengeance. And be willing to aid me in trapping one particular Englishman.”

He was silent a long time, those deep hazel eyes shaded as he considered. Finally, he raised his head. “Tell me who we're trapping.”

With a tremulous breath and a sensation as though she were falling, Ailis spoke her enemy's name. “Oliver Dane.”

Only long experience of mimicking his father's blank expression kept Stephen from flinching when Ailis pronounced Dane's name.

It did not keep his mind from leaping into a whirlwind of shock and questions.
Dane?
Oliver Dane was Liadan's father?

Bed an Irish girl—the right Irish girl—and you'll never be contented with an Englishwoman again.
Dane had spoken with perfect accuracy when choosing the word “girl”—Ailis had been but fourteen inside Carrigafoyle.

In that turmoil of thoughts, Stephen instinctively chose the right emotion to show—disgust. With a twist of her beautiful mouth, Ailis said, “I assume your expression means you've heard of him.”

“I have.” He forced his mind under his control, because just now he needed to think quickly and decisively. “It was under his orders that I was punished and Roisin killed.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Indeed? You did not say so before.”

“I did not think it mattered. It wasn't Dane himself, you understand”—Stephen let the tiniest memory of that night outside Kilkenny leak into his voice—“but I'd met him. And I know it was by his orders that violence was done.”

She propped her chin in one hand, her eyes dark and liquid. “You sound as though you care for him almost as little as I do.”

“It cannot be compared. What he did to me, though abhorrent, is at least just excusable in the bounds of warfare. What he did to you—what he has done to other women and children—there is no excuse. I meant only to say that I will have very little trouble in helping you destroy him.”

“Good.” Ailis smiled, and Stephen thought dizzily that he would gladly agree to anything this woman wanted so long as it made her look at him like this.

His pulse beat loud and fast, and he was almost light-headed from this swift turnaround. God must be watching over him, to present this opportunity so neatly in his path. There was only one sticking point. However Ailis meant to trap Dane, Stephen could not allow himself to be seen. He wanted vengeance, but not at the cost of losing his place in this household. He wasn't ready to leave. Not yet.

Fortunately, Ailis did not press for specific plans just then. Perhaps uncomfortable with how personal she'd allowed herself to be, she dismissed him a little abruptly and said they would talk more later. He sent in Father Byrne and Diarmid, as she'd asked him to, ignoring the baleful glare of the captain of the guards. Stephen had worked out the first week that the man was in love with Ailis. Picking a fight with Diarmid would not help.

Liadan called to him from where she and Maisie were playing chess at the end of a long trestle table previously set for dinner. “Maisie cheats!” she announced energetically, as she announced everything. “So it's only fair that you help me.”

“I'm not really sure it's possible to cheat at chess,” Stephen answered, swinging a leg over the bench so he straddled it next to the exuberant child. “Even if it is, I'll be of no use to you. I'm no good at chess. That's all my—”

He swallowed hard, almost choking back the damning word.
That's all my sister,
he'd nearly said. But Stephen Wyatt did not have a sister. Could he really be so easily thrown by the smile of a beautiful woman and the promise of revenge on Oliver Dane?

Liadan didn't seem to notice, but Maisie glanced at him curiously. “That's all what?” she asked.

“That's all my own fault,” he retorted, hoping he didn't sound as shaken as he felt. “I could never concentrate long enough.”

“It's not concentration so much as the ability to see the wider picture,” Maisie countered. “It's all a matter of patterns and probabilities—rather like business.”

Liadan, impatient, cried, “It's your move.”

With scarcely a glance at the board, Maisie moved a knight and took one of Liadan's pawns. The pieces were pewter, not the ivory or marble or jewel-inlaid pieces Stephen was accustomed to seeing. He had dozens of memories of Lucette and his mother, playing each other mostly to spend time together, since Lucie had been able to beat everyone in the household by the time she was eight.